Kishi Bashi With Strings On Mountain Stage

Eclectic pop maestro Kishi Bashi makes his front-and-center debut on Mountain Stage, recorded live at the Culture Center Theater in Charleston, W.Va. A classically trained strings player raised in Virginia, Karou Ishibashi transformed into indie musician Kishi Bashi playing with the seminal alt-rock band of Montreal and touring as violinist for Regina Spektor and Sondre Lerche. Since stepping out solo in 2012, Bashi has transformed into a mad pop scientist, giving life to earworms by looping together Eastern sounds, Philip Glass improvisations and '70s prog rock inspiration (and, in this set, a new take on the Talking Heads). As Mountain Stage guest host Joni Deutsch puts it, "Kishi Bashi is bridging the divide between classical and mainstream music...and making it wonderfully accessible."

Kishi Bashi's latest release is Sonderlust, out now on Joyful Noise Recordings. For this recording, he is joined by Michael Savino and Daniel Brunner, along with local strings work from Molly Page, Kimberly Graham, Patrick Forsyth and Bernard Di Gregorio.